Suitcases and luggage are a traveler's constant companions. Luggage can be used to transport items such as clothing, papers, electronics, gifts and memorabilia in bulk, enabling travelers to keep track of their effects more easily. Luggage generally presents the traveler with trade-offs: hard suitcases can protect fragile items, but tend to take up large amounts of space, whether empty or full. As travelers frequently do not carry the same quantity of objects on all legs of their journeys, using hard cases can frequently mean spending time and effort carrying large, empty receptacles from one place to another. Soft luggage is more compact and extensible, but provides less protection for valuable or fragile goods. Some solutions to this dilemma in the past have included gussets, which allow limited expansion of hard cases, with small corresponding loss of security, or collapsible suitcases that combine hard and soft components in an attempt to compromise between the disadvantages of the two forms. This only partially solves the issues presented by traditional luggage design.
Therefore, there remains a need for a fully collapsible hard luggage item that is durable and convenient to use.